I promised garden updates.

This is rather unfortunate.

I spent a whole day planning a garden. I researched all sorts of vegetables and thought about what I would want to grow, and then I made a plan for how I would lay out my garden. The next day I went outside and dug the outline of a rectangle and waited for my mom to tell me if that was a good place to put a garden. You probably won't be all that surprised to find that it wasn't--while the area was sunny in the mid-afternoon, it was really only sunny for a few hours during the day, and that wouldn't work well for actually growing plants that didn't die.

My mom suggested a new spot, on the side of the house, where there wasn't really much room but plenty for the small amount of garden that I needed. Unfortunately, digging my garden in this new spot was put off until after finals were over, because by the time I realized that I needed a new spot and where to put it, I was sort of overloaded with writing papers. Write write write write write. (Next semester will be so much worse--four English classes! AHHHH!)

Well, since my finals finished, I went outside the other day. I'd like to say that I was going outside to finally dig my garden and get it all ready for planting, even though it's sort of late in the season, but really I was going outside to sit under a tree and read and enjoy the weather. I did, however, glance over at the area that my mom said would be a good garden place--it was COMPLETELY shaded, and it stayed that way until it started getting dark out.

I glanced wistfully at the shovel and rake I've kept by my back door and realized that, well, this is just not the year for me to start a garden. There isn't a single area in my yard that gets more than a few hours of sun a day--or, if there is, I haven't found it yet. I'll be looking out for it, though. Maybe this summer I'll notice a sunny patch somewhere random that I wouldn't have thought to look and my garden will happen next year. I'd like that.

For now, though, I think it's time to buy some potted tomato plants and maybe some herbs. They can live on the big brick patio that, sadly, takes up all the sunny yard-space. And now, some Langston Hughes to capture my mood:



What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Should I be this sad about not having a garden? And, more importantly, will my lack of garden explode?

I mean, it's not like I'm ever home to take care of it anyway.

I'm making a garden!

I decided a while ago that I should have a vegetable garden. I'm not entirely sure why; I suppose I felt like it would be nice to have something to take care of, especially if that something gives me food in return. Unfortunately, I know nothing about gardening. NOTHING. So I turned to the Internet, which I figured would be of some help at least, and it sort of told me how far apart to plant things and what pH the soil should be. Things like this are sort of helpful, but it doesn't help me know how many bell pepper plants I should grow if I want a steady supply of bell peppers.

I made a list of what I want to plant, and dug a square in my yard, and drew a graph so that I could figure out where to put everything. I want peppers, tomatoes, onions, green beans and zucchini. (I'm not sure if it's entirely good to plant zucchini just so I can have an excuse to make zucchini bread, but that's what I'm doing.) My plan has six tomato plants and nine pepper plants and a row (about 8 feet) of onions and another row (also about 8 feet) of green beans. Oh, and two zucchini mounds. I sort of feel like I might want to eliminate one of the zucchini mounds in favor of more onions, because I basically use them all the time and I don't really use a lot of zucchini but I don't know. AT ALL. This is confusing.

So I remade my garden-plot in GIMP (basically open-source photoshop) and you can see it above. Each square is a square foot. The red T's are tomato plants, and the green P's are peppers, and the green G's are green beans, and the big Z circles are the zucchini mounds. That makes a lot of sense to me. Oh, and the sun isn't really sitting in my back yard. That just indicates the rough direction of the sun (which I didn't take into account at first but Mike pointed out that I probably don't want my tomatoes blocking the light for everything else and I reversed the whole thing).

So, I'll probably have occasional updates about how my vegetables are doing. I'm nervous about it because I have no idea what I'm doing and I might end up with a really weird amount of vegetables, but I suppose all that is learning for next year. I'm also nervous because I watched this video about vegetables and it scared me. Do I have to sing to them?

So if you have any advice for having a vegetable garden and you feel like giving it to me, that would be awesome. And I'll have the lentil recipe up soon; my plans to see the cookbook got postponed so I still don't have the right name for the dish and therefore don't want to post it yet. Soon, though.